On February 2, 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the United States’ decision to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, citing the Russian Federation’s material breach of the Treaty as justification for the decision.

According to Article XV of the Treaty, the United States will suspend its obligations under the Treaty 60 days after providing notice, unless in this time, Russia agrees to come in compliance.

Major studies of American foreign relations treat US failures in Vietnam as the end of both a short-lived American empire and western imperialism in Southeast Asia. Ngoei argues that Vietnam was an exception to the region’s overall pro-US trajectory after 1945, that British neo-colonialism and Southeast Asian anticommunism melded with pre-existing local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from formal colonialism to US hegemony.

From Syria to Yemen to Ukraine, the practice of great powers covertly meddling in local wars is alive and well. To mark the launch of his new book, Austin Carson traced the emergence of such practices in the 20th century. He analyzed what governments choose to keep secret during wars and how leaders use this method to cope with distinctly modern war escalation problems. Carson also explored how rival states both collude and compete, while attempting to manipulate the optics of war to keep military confrontations under control.

Image: U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Mexican president José López Portillo waving at a crowd in Mexico City, 14 February 1979 (Wikimedia Commons).

The Nicaraguan revolution of 1979 inaugurated a violent decade of civil strife that has affected North American political relations for the past 40 years. The current migration and security crisis in Central America are among its many profound and long-lasting repercussions.

The Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program and the University of North Korean Studies, at Kyungnam University, in cooperation with the Wilson Center’s Asia Program/Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center, hosted a workshop this past fall to recognize the collaboration and partnership between the two organizations.

The Wilson Center, chartered by Congress as the living memorial to President Woodrow Wilson, is the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum. In tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue, the Center informs actionable ideas for Congress, the administration, and the broader policy community.